Baby, I just can't sleep.

[stalkingsocks]

the i n s o m n i a meme


It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?

i n s t r u c t i o n s

• Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!

o p t i o n s

01 • FEAR. Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.
02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.
03 • PAIN. Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.
04 • SOLITUDE. For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...
05 • DISCOMFORT. Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.
06 • PENSIVE. Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?
07 • SADNESS. Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.
08 • ANGER. You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.
09 • RESTLESS. You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.
10 • WILDCARD. Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.

Comments

[thedominatrix]

"It's one of them," Irene says, smiling up at her, stroking her thumb over the back of her hand, making allusions to countless secrets. And that's alright now. They've established what sort of people they are. "The rest are harder work to get out of me, if you want them."

--did she just offer to tell the truth? Whoops. That might be going a bit far.

"But not for absolution's sake, of course." And it's not. If she wants to reveal some part of herself it's part of some tactic or another- or it's showing off- or it's a last-ditch effort to connect in a way that isn't staged or planned.

[asklepios]

“Hard work for me?” Benevenuta lifts her hands, kisses them-- “Or,” turning them over, her thumbs against Irene's wrists, “for you?”

...and that - that right there - was her confession. The knowing underneath that wry, intimate inquiry; the understanding. The sense-memory in the words of a thousand times she didn't know how to tell the truth not because the truth was such a terrible thing but because she wasn't in the habit, because her instincts disagreed with what she was trying to make herself do, because she was thinking damage control before she'd made the mess.

[thedominatrix]

Irene opens her mouth to respond and doesn't, watching Benevenuta with parted lips and feeling distinctly exposed.

You too, then.

She almost wants to tell her to stop it, stop it because it isn't fair and no one gets to her, thank you very much, and most particularly no one shows up on her doorstep after three years and then manages to get to her in defiance of everything.

But it's apparently not true.

Then again, that's never stopped either of them.

"Oh, both of us," she says, faux-airy. It's very much like Mélisande's apologetic afterthoughts, but in reverse; if Mélisande apologises for being too intense, too strange, then Irene covers up for being momentarily far too human with a dismissive wryness, a wolfish grin, a reckless sort of expression which implies she lives a life far beyond human imagination and you, yes, you, just as you are, are invited. You lucky, lucky thing.

It's not as convincing as her acts usually are, so she relents slightly, licking her lips, reckless, ruthless smile turning rueful but still strangely defiant- I'm not sorry, I just wish I didn't have so many things to be so adamantly not sorry about.

"How did it go?" she breathes, and Benevenuta might feel her pulse hammering. "'You're beautiful and I want to kiss you.' You romantic."

She could make those last two words wry, joking, we're so above romance or at least I am, but she doesn't. Instead, her voice is tinged with wonder.

[asklepios]

“Yes,” with this tiny little barely-there a nothing thing smile, like she is herself the secret that she's inviting Irene to keep in turn. “Yes. Me the romantic.”

When she cups Irene's face in her hands and kisses her, it's so sweet that it almost feels like some kind of shared transgression - they shouldn't be able to, wretched with deceit and electric with danger, but they are, just this once. With the right players, it's kinkier than the leather or the crop, this last lone she loves me not petal of a kiss.

I wanted to be romantic about you, Irene.

There's nothing else to add to that. She kisses her again.

[thedominatrix]

At first she barely moves, eyelashes trembling on her cheeks, one hand just barely brushing over the back of one of Benevenuta's, the other hovering, frozen, until she curls it into a fist and digs her nails into her own palm. It's so delicate, so sweet, that it takes her off guard. It's a goodbye kiss, and an oh well kiss and maybe a good luck kiss, and it hurts, and for some reason Irene can't catch her breath between it and the next. She makes some kind of misstep when it's over, so very finally over- perhaps she gasps too sharply, but whatever it is she forgets herself and then she's suffocating against Mélisande's mouth and it doesn't matter.

Irene's hands find her waist, giving up on one clutching her there, one travelling to her back, up her spine, long fingers spreading out on the cool, borrowed silk and feeling Benevenuta's warmth beneath it. By the second kiss, breathless as it is, she has found her feet, and decided that she will not go quietly, never.

They can be as romantic as they want to be. For now, in this suspended moment in between one escape and the next, a bar's rest before a frenzied crescendo, they can define themselves as whatever they want, not as whatever will keep them safe or whatever will prove to be advantageous. So: romance. How is this done, again? When you're not scripting it, that is, angling for something, when it's its own reward?

"Mélisande."

A fake name, muttered against the corner of her mouth, about three years out of place and spoken- why? An exclamation, a sigh, a lament, punctuation? Maybe it's just better than quiet.

[asklepios]

“Me,” she repeats the word against Irene's mouth, instead of a name, and this is how it's defined: me and you and names don't matter because she wants truth and she can't give that much, she can't give something that can't be explained (a name from a history book, a little girl who vanished in the fall of a dynasty and was never found), she can't give her something that is only more questions, but--

Me. She can give her everything underneath that, for a while. The anatomy of meaning stripped bare of its definitions.

“And you,” and it's like a sigh, a promise-for-tonight.

[thedominatrix]

And that's enough. Irene hates to do with only the bare bones of things- but she can. If she has to, she can.

"Of course," she breathes.

And maybe even the bare bones of this particular affair will be too much. To be quite literal, she's already having a hard time breathing.

She presses her mouth to Benevenuta's jaw, her cheek against hers for a moment, wondering how they went from being estranged to this in the space of hours, if it's been hours- she can't tell. Nothing seems quite real, which suits them. She's almost waiting to wake up.

She could say do you promise but of course, the answer is no and it's probably best that way.

Her hand has found Mélisande's damp hair, now, instead of her waist, fingers raking over her scalp- and there's something so possessive in everything she does with her, something that chants mine, which is ironic because Irene could have nearly anybody she wanted, and...not her, not like she wants her.

But she'll try, though it's pointless, holding her ever closer, ever tighter. Mine. For a while. Long enough to say goodbye, if not long enough.

[asklepios]

It is fitting, this desire, this can't-have, this understanding. Would they want so badly if not for the ability to see? Would they have to part so imperatively if not for the same thing? Benevenuta doesn't ask questions she already knows the answer to, not of herself. There's almost something vindictive about coming here, about shedding enough to let Irene see how much she still can't, something unkind and selfish and hurtful about telling the truth for a little while.

It hurt, unexpectedly, to have to leave behind even possibility. Her hands and mouth and heart here are dragging Irene into that hurt with her; want me, need me, lose me as I am losing you, remember the way we ended, remember the edge of my reality and not the girl we dreamed me being. The story she's telling, rewriting--

--this isn't what she planned when she came to the door, but it is exactly what she wanted, sinking down to Irene's bed with desire that includes but isn't limited to the way she wants to leave a mark on Irene that can't be mirrored on her own untouchable, unmarred skin. That includes but isn't limited to this moment at all, that is the fierce claiming of a hundred moments later when she'll be gone, living in Irene's memory the way she might not have if she hadn't come.

She is not going to be a fleeting regret over a fucking blog post a week from now. She'll be a fist around her heart and a hand on her mouth, that is how the story (ends).

(Ends. Does it?)